by Natasha Stoudt Over the past couple of weeks, the internet has exploded with responses to Chris Hedges’ article “The Cancer in Occupy.” I’m going to sidestep the issue of what was wrong or right with Hedges’ article or the many responses to it, and focus on the deeper subject of the debate it spawned:…
Category: Headlines
A Contract is a Contract: Clarifying the ILWU/EGT Outcome in Longview
by Chris Lowe A contract is a contract… In a previous item in The Occupier, Lester Macgurdy argued that we should not exaggerate the victory achieved by ILWU Local 21 in Longview in their struggle against union-busting and scab labor employed by EGT/Bunge. Nor should we overblow Occupy’s achievement in affecting the outcome, lest we…
It’s Not About the Money! (Part 3)
by Rich Cohen In recent opinion editorials I spoke to the necessity of restoring citizen control over our country with a congressional district electoral strategy that gets us the majority numbers needed to actually govern. I outlined how we ought to do it and our capacity to get it done. Yet the most meaningful and…
Harvard Community Protests Library Cut
This article is from the Occupied Media news wire. It was originally published over at the Boston Occupier. by Julie Walsh On the evening of Thursday, February 16, a circle of about forty picketers marched outside Harvard University’s Lamont Library, chanting and waving signs in an intermittent drizzle. The group had gathered to protest the…
Protest and Movement: What This Means for Occupy
by David “Däv” O’Bryant Protest and Movement: Distinctions Political protest, whether with an aim toward raising social consciousness within the broad public or with that of challenging authority in the hopes of pressuring power to concede to demand, sometimes (though by no means always) occurs within the framework of a wider protest movement. Unlike specific…
Why Prison is Profitable
by Ahjamu Umi I wrote my Master’s Thesis on the politics of imprisonment and comparative economics. The imprisonment portion of the 70 page research centered on the state of California, where I lived at the time, and the 160,000 people who are imprisoned there. My research confirmed the obvious facts. Eight out of ten people…
Will Occupy Spring Forward Or Melt Down?
By Shamus Cooke A healthy debate has finally gripped the Occupy Movement: there is now a discussion over strategy. Most Occupiers have learned that raw enthusiasm alone cannot bring victory to a social movement; ideas matter too. Action divorced from strategy equals wasted energy, divisiveness, diversions and unnecessary mistakes. Not all tactics push the movement…
Black Bloc: Occupy the Black Bloc!
Editor’s Note: This Tuesday, Feb. 21st, come to the basement at St. Francis at 7PM for a community discussion on the black bloc and the future of Occupy Portland tactics. Had enough of discussions about Black Bloc? No? Good! Because we’re running a three-day series on Black Bloc tactics. Click the Black Bloc Series tag…
Black Bloc: Two Wrongs Never Make a Right!
Had enough of discussions about Black Bloc? No? Good! Because we’re running a three-day series on Black Bloc tactics. Click the Black Bloc Series tag to read the other articles, delving into the controversy currently sparking throughout the Occupy movement and beyond. By Vargus Pike In the realm of mathematics two negatives when added together…
Speak Out Against Chemical Weapons
By Rochelle Saliba If you showed up at a seminal Occupy Portland moment—eviction day, Shemanski, Jamison—you either were a witness to, or the victim of, tactics currently being deployed by our local police state. Some people bristle at the notion that Portland does indeed constitute a police state. Portlanders, like most Americans, are understandably shaky…
